Comcast Peers with the Pittsburgh GigaPoP

PITTSBURGH, August 25, 2004 —
The Pittsburgh GigaPoP, managed
by PSC’s networking group, has installed a high-speed network
link to Comcast. This peering arrangement allows Comcast and the
GigaPoP to exchange traffic directly rather than going through
national Internet backbones, enhancing access to regional resources
for Comcast high-speed Internet subscribers.

“This not only improves communication between regional individuals
and institutions,” said Wendy Huntoon, PSC assistant director for
networking, “it also lowers costs. By keeping local network traffic
local, Comcast and GigaPoP customers reduce latency in local
network connections and save money from reduced Internet bandwidth
use.”

Previous to the peering arrangement, a teleconferencing connection
from a Comcast subscriber to the University of Pittsburgh may have
gone through New York or Chicago — hopping through many routers in
between. Now the connection goes from Comcast through the
Pittsburgh GigaPoP directly to the University of Pittsburgh. This
shorter trip drastically improves performance of demanding
applications such as teleconferencing. Because the data isn’t
traveling over national Internet backbones, bandwidth and costs for
those backbones are reduced.

The GigaPoP also peers with PITX
— a peering exchange that includes local Internet Service
Providers such as Pair Networks, Telerama and Nauticom. Comcast
users, therefore, should also see improved performance when
connecting to these ISPs.

Through the Pittsburgh GigaPoP, a high-speed network crossroads
that serves Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, the University of
Pittsburgh, West Virginia University and the Pittsburgh Public
Schools, PSC provides advanced network resources for education and
research. The GigaPoP connects the universities and PPS to Abilene,
a high-performance network linking more than 250 U.S. universities
and research organizations.